What begins in sorrow and ends in joy? Check out the title of this blog for the answer.
When we get serious about sin in our lives there always has to be confession. Sometimes it’s between me and the Lord…other times I need some earthly accountability and I’ve got to bring some people that love me and desire God’s best for me into the loop. Lately I’ve really been working on my words – doing my best to ensure that my words are building up and not tearing down and that I’m bringing glory to God. I’m encouraged to see growth but I also have moments of failure so I’m thankful for those people in my life who hold me accountable. Recently I was into a rant about something and Amber loudly said, “WORDS! WORDS!” It made us both giggle but it stopped me before I got carried away and I carefully weighed how I would communicate my thoughts and feelings about what we were discussing.
This year I’ve been doing a book study with a group of women and one of the books that we’ve been reading is “
Celebration of Discipline” by Richard Foster. Each time we meet, one of the women shares what she’s read in one of the chapters. A few weeks ago we talked about the spiritual discipline of confession…and then we had that sweet response time a few Sundays ago (LOVE God’s timing!). In his book, Foster talks about three parts of confession that are necessary:
1. “An examination of conscience” – asking God to show us the areas in our lives where we need to do business with him.
2. “Sorrow” – being grieved over our sin, seeing it as God sees it.
3. “A determination to avoid sin” – confession – to God and maybe a trusted friend in order to put some accountability in place.
Confession is hard…it takes humility and a real desire to be done with the sin but the freedom that comes brings much joy and sweetness.
I recently heard about a small group leader in our church who asked one of the members of her group, "What's so special about your sin?" – good question. We all have sin – we’re human…all sin is equally against God…if we really believe that the ground is level at the foot of the cross then why do we cringe when we hear the word confession? Shame isn’t a good place to stay in…Christ died for us so that we can be free of shame. We need to take our shame, our burdens and our sin to the foot of the cross and leave it there in confession and repentance. And maybe, just maybe, we need to spend some time praying about who we need to be accountable to here on earth.